Theatrical Day!

It has been quite a busy last few days. I've seen a lot of shows and other theatrical things and it was FABULOUS. I also worked, which was significantly less interesting.

To start the post with a downer: work on Friday was DEATH. It was fun to chat with Pat and Joyce and everything, but I needed to cut out index-ish cards for each Strasberg student. They were printed four per page. There are 300 students. I cut out 1800 INDEX CARDS ON FRIDAY. And no one mentioned that they needed to be organized, so I just kinda threw them around willy-nilly. Only after I was done did someone mention, "Oh, by the by, Kelly, those need to be in a VERY SPECIFIC ORDER." I had to organize alphabetically by teacher. And within those categories, by day the class is taught. And within that, by hour of the day. And within that, alphabetically by student.

DEATH. I started this task at 10:30 on Friday and didn't finish by the time I left at 5:15.

But the rest of the weekend was very theatre-filled and fab. Ish. On Friday, our NYAP advisor gave us tickets to a show called Race Music. Hearing the description of this show (something about a black man in a Midwestern city applies for a radio announcer job and is rejected because he is black. The show is an examination of racial relations in pre-Obama 1999) makes it sound really interesting, but it ended up being...not very good. And that's being generous.

The biggest issue is that the writing was TERRIBLE. You could see the actors struggling to make their lines sound legit (any show that tries to work in, "Harv, that is so uncool" is never going to really succeed) and they tried as hard as they could, but could only go so far. On the upside, the lights were GREAT.

So Nick and I made a game of comparing Race Music to every Albion College production that has happened during our college career and deciding whether those were better or worse. The conclusion: our school's shows lack the polish of Race Music (let's be honest, they were professional actors and they were a legit Off-Broadway show). But mostly we decided that The Runner Stumbles was the worst production EVER.

On Saturday, Nick finally wandered down to my room at 11:30 (I had clearly been awake for EVER) and we just up and decided to try to win the Hair lottery. Which is at noon. So we scurried the fifteen or so blocks (we are all about scurrying places) to make it in time. But unfortunately my 8 to 6 luck did not extend to Hair. But God of Carnage was literally fifty feet away, so we decided to get SRO tickets for that. GOOD DECISION. The show was only 90 minutes or so, so it wasn't terrible to stand, and the show was AMAZING. IMMACULATE. I can not find anything wrong with it at all. Marcia Gay Harden was flawless, as were the other actors. The lights were beautiful. The set was perfect. The play is so well-written that I am currently considering inventing a new religion in which Yasmina Reza plays are my Bible. Seriously. It was amazing.

Plus I got to meet Marcia Gay Harden. Who was SO NICE. She was very approachable, we chatted and she was so gorgeous. A wonderful person.

And today Nick and I headed back to Times Square to go to Broadway on Broadway, a free outdoor concert where all the musicals of Broadway perform. Also AMAZING. It was perfect weather (it had been raining on Friday and Saturday, something I was only willing to tolerate because A Steady Rain opened on Friday and that's exactly what happened, haha), all the performers were great, we got to see a preview of things like White Christmas and Finian's Rainbow and was just a whole pile of fun. Seth Rudetsky did a song along, and then we saw him later on at the Avenue Q box office, and stalked him slightly. Not for long, because he eventually got in a cab, and we didn't talk to him because he was with his family, but we definitely creepily followed them for a while and snapped some photos.

And then later on today, a whole bunch of us went down to the VMAs at Radio City Music Hall, realized people had been there since 9:00 AM and we couldn't see anything and bailed to come back to the 305 and watch them on TV. But we saw all the setups for the VMAs! Hooray! Just as interesting, if you ask me. Actually, if you were to ask me in person, I will probably tell you that I actually ATTENDED to VMAs. Yup, I met Taylor Swift. I saw Shakira and Pink show up in the same dress. I saw Kanye go CRAZY. True story.

So it was a busy weekend. I got to do a lot of amahzing stuff, and I was even on call on Saturday night. I'm just a social butterfly. :)

I miss everyone from back home. Your thoughts on everyone moving to New York City to be with me? I have one extra bed, so you'll all have to share. TOTALLY fine, I imagine, haha. I'll be expecting everyone next weekend. :)
Love you all, Kelly

PS: Today, Nick and I took the subway for the first time since we got to the city. I'm pretty proud of us.